The Task of the Translator

This portfolio offers a glimpse into my journey through the task of the translator, a course I took in the spring of 2024 with Dr. McGregor. In this portfolio, I highlight and present some of the works and strategies employed in the course as well as lessons taken from the course.

Translation & Analysis

During the course, we all translated a couple of texts into English from German. These texts were drawn from different literary genres, handling topics like race, identity, migration, and multilingualism. For my analysis, I will use two texts: Maya Ayim’s Blues in a Black and White as well as Yoko Tawada’s Wo Europa anfängt. I have two reasons for these choices: 1. The first piece is relevant to what it means to be Afro-German and the need for literary engagement with works showcasing the struggles of navigating life in a polarized racial landscape, and 2. The pieces belong to different genres, i.e., poetry and narrative. It becomes interesting to note what it takes to translate these two texts.

We also had the freedom to choose one literary text not older than 8 years and translate within the scope of 4000 words from either German to English or vice versa. I decided to translate a couple of chapters of Die Löwin von Kenia by Lea Kampe, published in 2022. This novel is based on Jenseits von Afrika, which is about Karen Blixen, a Danish woman who worked in Kenya during the colonial period as a farm manager. I believe engagement with colonial texts is something we can never have enough of. There is always room for discourse surrounding colonialism, even in translation, which is why I particularly chose this book, and my criteria were audience, tone, and equivalence. We also presented our works during the Translation Gallery.

Pedagogical Application

Since I am an instructor, how could my focal project be part of the larger pedagogical practice? For this, those who took German 561 came up with a lesson plan intended to showcase how our project could find a place in our teaching. I decided to use the text “Judge the Book by its Cover” as inspiration. A lot of information is usually contained in the front matter of a book, which often is not discussed enough, and this would be doable for German 101 students who are just getting started with the German language. So, I came up with a lesson plan on how one can incorporate literature with an interesting front page and how to didacticize it.

Time allocated	Activity- Partner Work	Rational
5 Minutes	1. Mit dem Partner, Identifizieren Sie den Titel und Autor bzw. die Autorin des Buches	Name identification and titles of written texts
	2. Wie heißt der Titel (Was könnte das bedeuten?)	Identification of titles of texts and gaining clues to what the text could be about from just the titles. This helps also when skimming through headlines in newspapers or online articles to decide on what is interesting to read.
5 Minutes	3. Welche Farben und Objekten sieht ihr?	Practicing colors and names of objects . Vocabulary training and allowing students to identify patterns.